CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BITTER CUP.
When the Queen came to her senses she was in her sleeping room in the Tuileries. Her favorite bed-chamber women, Lady Misery and Madam Campan were at hand. Though they told her the Dauphin was safe, she rose and went to see him: he was in sleep after the great fright.
She looked at him for a long time, haunted by the words of that awful man: "I save you because you are needed to hurl the throne over into the last abyss." Was it true that she would destroy the monarchy? Were her enemies guarding her that she might accomplish the work of destruction better than themselves? But would this gulf close after swallowing the King, the throne and herself? Would not her two children go down in it also? In religions of the past alone is innocence safe to disarm the gods?
Abraham's sacrifice had not been accepted, but it was not so in Jephthaph's case.
These were gloomy thoughts for a Queen, gloomier still for a mother.
She shook her head and went slowly back to her rooms. She noticed the disorder she was in and took a bath and was attired more fitly.
The news awaiting her was not so black as she had feared; all three Lifeguards had been saved from the mob, mainly by Petion who screened a good heart under his rough bark. Malden and Valory were in the palace, bruised, wounded, but alive. Nobody knew where Charny was in refuge after having been snatched from the ruffians.
At these words from Madam Campan, such a deadly pallor came over the Queen's countenance that the Lady thought it was from anxiety about the count and she hastened to say: